Poll: Is it Okay for Retailers to Track Customers’ Shopping Behavior While in Stores?

If you’ve done any shopping online, you probably know the feeling: You pick out, say, a pair of shoes online, put them in your virtual shopping cart, but then for some reason change your mind. Afterwards, it seems that every site you visit features an ad for that very pair of shoes. The reason? Online retailers can give you a virtual identification number and track you as you go from site to site, targeting you with ads for products they already know you want.

Here’s the new twist: Feeling the pinch of online competition, many brick-and-mortar retailers are hoping to emulate these tactics. What’s more, technology already exists that can identify customers in a store — through their smart phones, and even through video cameras that use facial recognition software — and track their shopping behavior. Not surprisingly, these developing technologies have raised privacy concerns — even as industry experts insist that they can and will be used responsibly.

Please tell us how you view this practice by participating in the following (thoroughly unscientific) poll. Your answers will inform the conversation during a live “Google Hangout” on the subject next week — and will also help us shape TIME’s coverage on the future of retail.

Oh .. I use tracking detection software on my computers and anonymous my internet ID .. and actually I do more .. I set up a proxy server which I use to encrypt all my navigation, sine this is a virtual server, outside of the US, ... I manage the logs of the server .. so there is almost noway anyone can know what I do on the net.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PURCHASE - big brother watching you at the mall; using facial recognition and neuroscience techniques to measure your brainwave activity in real time, capturing your purchase considerations at the moment they are formed in your brain.